Great science is often stimulated by events, and so it was with the seminal work of Denis New, who has died aged 80. As a young embryologist in the 1960s, Denis was influenced by two tragedies, one private, the other public. The personal loss was the death of a newborn son from complications resulting from a placental defect. The wider tragedy was the thalidomide disaster. Both illustrated painfully the primitive state of human embryology, and the harmful consequences of that ignorance.

In 1961, Denis joined the Strangeways research laboratory in Cambridge, and it was there he began his groundbreaking work on mammalian embryos. This built on his studies as a PhD student with Michael Abercrombie at University College London (UCL) in the early 1950s, where Denis pioneered the technique of embryo culture. As a new doctoral student, he wanted to study the fate of cells in the chick embryo by tagging them with radioactivity, then observing what the labelled cells did. He quickly discovered that the experiment was impossible while the chick remained in the egg, but of course it died if it was removed. He was not the first embryologist to find himself in this conundrum, which was why at this time fetal development was understood primarily through studies of reptiles and fish. Denis, however, was not to be limited in this way. He realised that progress required that the chick be coaxed to survive in a dish.

Denis's approach was characteristically precise and systematic, but it was also insightful. Others before him had cultured chick embryos in clots of plasma, but this was messy. Denis concentrated on the vitelline membrane, which most of us know as the coating of the yolk that routinely bursts in the frying pan. Denis realised that the key was to take the membrane from the egg, and to get the embryo to grow on that. The result was the publication in 1955 of his paper A New Technique for the Cultivation of the Chick Embryo. For the generation of developmental biologists that followed, this became the pre-eminent guide to embryo culture, and the technique was taken up with enthusiasm.

Later on, Denis would never admit that the double entendre in the title was deliberate, but the procedure became known as the "New technique", and Denis, of course, was the "new" in question. He did, however, later confess to a culinary byproduct of the research; he would take the eggs that had not been labelled home for tea, a useful supplement to a student income.

Denis was born in Eltham, south-east London, and attended Eltham academy. He always attributed his love of biology to visits to his grandparents' home in rural Gloucestershire, where the liberated city boy was able to roam free, catch butterflies and frogs, and scrump fruit. He won scholarships to St John's College, Oxford, and, after national service, spent three undergraduate years there studying zoology.

His first scientific publication dates from this time: a study of the larval stages of the nematode, Rhabditis pellio, published in 1953. Denis cultured this parasitic worm on rotting meat in his student digs. This research helped to get him a research post at UCL. After completing his PhD and marrying a fellow UCL biologist, June Wright, he and his new wife took up posts at the University College of the West Indies, in Jamaica. It was an opportunity to travel, but also a chance to engage in a "tropical" research project, in which Denis, who had kept bees as a boy, was able to show how memory played a role in the "dance" that the bees do in the hive to indicate the location of food.

In 1961, Denis and June set up home in Cambridge, later raising two daughters. As well as a return to England, this also marked a return to embryology, and to the challenge of mammalian embryos. Denis worked in Cambridge until his retirement in 1996, first at Strangeways, then in the university's physiology laboratory. He undertook to culture rodent embryos, until then never achieved. This was a pivotal period in British embryology, with many outstanding figures in the field passing through the department, not least Bob Edwards, of test-tube baby fame.

Denis found a way to culture mammalian embryos, growing the rat or mouse embryo to beyond the halfway stage of gestation, right through a period of substantial growth and elaboration of the embryo, and of sensitivity to drugs. Without a placenta, this is probably as far as embryonic development can go, and to this day science has not discovered how to engineer a placenta. In contrast to the membrane approach he had pioneered for chicks, Denis found a way to enable rodent embryos to grow in small rotating bottles, perfect for both observing normal development and for assessing the impact of potential teratogens (substances that cause abnormal cell development, and subsequent fetal defects).

His studies resulted in many publications, including a textbook on embryo culture in 1966. In particular, his 1978 paper describing the art of whole-embryo culture in detail, is one of the classic papers of modern biology and is still read and cited to this day. His culture technique was adopted worldwide and produced a flood of visiting scientists to his laboratory to learn the technique. Particularly prominent were toxicologists, keen to learn how to avoid another medical tragedy such as thalidomide. Similarly, invitations came from around the world to teach his technique.

Retirement brought the opportunity to indulge other passions. He and June reignited their enthusiasm for travel. He was an accomplished pianist and dedicated much time to music-making, particularly with young musicians at his college, Fitzwilliam, where he was a fellow for more than 40 years. He studied Russian and engaged in lengthy correspondence with Russian colleagues and friends. He translated an old Russian children's storybook, to the delight of his grandchildren. During his final decade, he became an enthusiastically complicit grandfather.